Repentant
by Palladius
Summary: My name is Scotch. Soldier, traitor, rebel, icon. This is my story.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: It's been a while, hasn't it FF? Truth is almost a year ago I lost my laptop with all my drafts and outlines, and with that I lost my inspiration and motivation to write. It's taken me a long time to start writing again, and I want to reassure all my readers that I fully intend to finish my other stories, but this is what my brain has produced and it would be a real shame to not post it. I'm particularly proud of the work I've done on this story._ __

 _Also, as I publish these stories and introduce new characters I'll be publishing them available for download to your XCOM 2 character pool. If you want to use any of my Advent characters you'll need to download the Advent Armour mod and Capnbub's Accessories Mod from the Workshop. Also feel free to submit your own OCs at any time in the form of reviews or PMs, and if you can make them available for download I'll add them to my character pool._ __

 _Other than that, happy reading and enjoy XCOM 2: Repentant._

1\. Birth

When were you born?

That's such a simple question to most. They know when they were born as surely as they know their own names. For people like me though, it's a harder question.

If they want to know when I was born in the strictest definition of the word, then the answer is that I wasn't. I supposed the closest word that accurately describes the process by which I came into the world is decanted.

I was decanted on the 18th of December 2034, at precisely nine AM. I remember it perfectly. That's one of my features, actually. Perfect memory. I suppose it's so I can rattle off any sequence of events to my superiors in the case I see something important and not miss a detail. But I'm getting sidetracked.

That isn't even my earliest memory. Even before I had the slightest hint of self-awareness there was information being jammed into my head. The one bit that really stands out are a set of three orders.

 **1\. Obey the commands of your superior officers without hesitation or question.** ****

 **2\. In the absence of orders, report immediately to the closest ADVENT barracks and inform your superiors that you are awaiting orders.** ****

 **3\. Report any damage to your neural chip immediately.** **  
**  
Those were the three directives that came to define everything I did.

But back to being born. One could take that phrase a little more metaphorically. Perhaps the first thought I had that I could call my own, that wasn't put into my head by my superior officers. But no, that wasn't it either. While deciding a nearby snack vendor smelled good was perhaps not an Advent directive, it was also not the kind of defiance my story is about.

No, I suppose that in the metaphorical sense, you could say I was born on the tenth of July, 2035.

 **10 JULY 2035 - ADVENT PATROL ROUTE #33851/A7, LONDON** **  
**  
"I heard they made another round of arrests the other day. Brought in a bunch of dissident sympathisers."

I shrug casually as I adjust my grip on my rifle for what must be the hundredth time. I don't know if it's the weight, the shape or what, but there's no comfortable way to hold the damn thing for an extended period of time.

"Those damn crazies. Seems to be one hiding in every res-block these days."

Up ahead of me, Suki and Block are talking. Suki is a Template Four standard infantry, with an altered physical structure to match a female human, while Block is a Template Twelve siege specialist infantry, with broad shoulders, dark skin and a deep voice. As I have picked up, there's twenty templates out there, with three or four facilities dedicated to producing each one.

Suki is probably my closest friend. I was there when she picked her name. Oh, we all have official Advent designations, meaningless strings of symbols that only appear on official documentation. Usually within a month we've picked a name we want to be known by. Suki's came from some sort of ridiculous creature, I don't even know what it was. Some sort of weird ball of fluff on four tiny legs came running up and started spraying urine over her boot. A human came running up, clucking away apologetically, and removed the offending creature, scolding it in a sickly simpering voice that made me feel slightly ill just hearing it, and it emerged the creature's name was Suki. My Suki apparently liked the sound of the name, and that was that. Sometimes I like to tease her about being named after an animal that peed on her foot, but then she threatens to come after me with a stun lance and I shut up sharpish.

Block, by contrast, is a relative newcomer. It's only recently the siege specialists have started to be added to patrol squads, but I'm already fond of him. His deep, slow voice has a calming effect about it, not to mention I feel a lot safer when standing next to someone who can envelop me in a kinetic shield at a moment's notice.

"Apparently they managed to grab someone pretty important this time. Some sort of technician who was hacking supply routes and tipping off dissident mobs."

I glance past the chatting pair to Boss at the head of the squad. I haven't made my mind up about Boss yet. The Template Sixteen command infantry unit can be standoffish at times but he's also scarily smart. I might not like him very much, but I'd trust him to lead me into a fight. He's got two fingers pressed against the side of his helmet, his head ducked down, sure tells he's on the command comm circuit. Beside him walks Crunch, our heavy autonomous support unit. Not much of a conversationalist, is Crunch, but I'm certainly glad of his artillery when things get serious.

Beside me, Splashie cradles her rifle a little defensively, head constantly on the swivel. There's definitely something up with Splashie. Barracks rumour has it that she was folded into our unit after most of her platoon was wiped out when dissidents rammed a truck full of high-ex into a train she was riding guard on, and sometimes I can hear her making soft distressed noises in her sleep, but according to Boss as long as she shoots when he tells her to shoot she's fine.

"You heard about that, Scotch?"

And then there's me. Scotch, template two standard infantry, at your service. I wag my head noncommittally at Block's question.

"All I heard was they shipped out everyone they grabbed late last night. Stuck them on a train and sent them off to processing. Good thing too, the world's better off with them in some hole in the middle of nowhere."

Suki turns and walks backwards for a couple of paces, grinning at me before she turns back around just in time to dodge a waste bin.

"Nah, they kept that tech guy I mentioned in a holding cell at the enforcement centre. Chrome's unit were the ones who nabbed him, he reckons they found a genuine V.I.P."

I notice Splashie suddenly tense beside me but I ignore it, chalking it up to one of the tiny woman's oddities.

"You really think so? Surely the Speaker would be bragging about it if they'd found someone important."

Suki waves her arms dramatically, nearly catching Block with her rifle butt as she launches into her scarily accurate impersonation of the Speaker.

"Last night our brave and super-awesome Advent peacekeepers arrested a dissident who is basically a total loser! Praise be to the Elders!"

Block chuckles.

"One of these days you're going to do that in front of the wrong person and get into a lot of trouble."

Suki just shoots him a cheeky grin. He sighs and shakes his head ruefully, but I can tell he's smiling.

"Well, I tried."

Unexpectedly, Splashie speaks up.

"Hey guys, does Boss look worried to you?"

It was only after the event that I put together what happened next. As if fate had heard Splashie's hesitant question the world shook and with a dull WHUMP sound I was bowled off my feet. I must have blacked out briefly, because the next thing I know I have the unpleasant taste of blood in my mouth and my vision is tilted at some crazy angle. I pick myself up off the floor, groping for my rifle as I try to hear past the ringing in my ears.

"... you okay? Scotch!"

I stagger briefly before regaining my balance.

"I'm okay. What happened?"

I look around and take in the scene around me. The first thing I see is Splashie, curled up into a ball with her arms wrapped around her head, rifle discarded a little way away. Block is kneeling beside her, one hand on her back as he tries to coax her out of whatever she's doing. Boss is jabbering angrily into the comm, gesticulating even though there's no way whoever is on the other end can see him, and Clank stands mutely beside him, rifle at the ready as he slowly turns on the spot, scanning for anything out of place. Suki is looking at me concernedly, picking up my rifle and pressing it into my hands, and behind her ...

The restaurant we had been passing has convenient glass panes on all four walls, shattered into tiny pieces now, letting me see straight through it to the enforcement centre on the other side. It looks like a giant creature has leant down and taken a bite out of the building. The entire upper floor is nothing but a few twisted spurs of jagged metal, thick black smoke billowing up into the sky, and a corner of the ground floor has been blasted away, rubble strewn across the plaza. I can see a few bodies littered across the ground, all in Advent battle armour.

Suki gestures angrily at the rapidly developing inferno.

"It's the Resistance!"

Boss gets off the comm and waves his hand in the air, getting our attention.

"Up top, let's go!"

I know what he means instinctively, it's classic Advent tactics straight from the basic manual. Take the high ground, rain down mag bolts from above.

Block punches the ground, a reassuring flash of energy rushing outwards and coalescing into the translucent red glow of personal kinetic shields around the squad. I have no idea how the tech works but I'm glad for it. A quick visual scan of the restaurant revealed a convenient drainpipe and I ran to the base of it, starting to climb.

I crested the edge of the roof, rushing to cover behind an air-con unit with Suki right behind me. Unfortunately, we weren't the only ones to have the bright idea of taking the high ground.

There were two people on the roof, a man and a woman, both with long rifles pointed down at the burning enforcement centre. The man doesn't even react to our presence but the woman turns around, a slight expression of surprise on her face. She is wearing some sort of body armour that almost looks like our own gear, except hers is painted royal blue. She is wearing a black beret with some sort of pentagonal metal badge affixed to the front, long wavy blonde hair spilling out from underneath it, and bizarrely for a sniper a pair of half framed glasses perched on her face.

All of that is secondary to the grenade she has just sent rolling across the roof towards me.

Reacting on some instinct I hadn't known I possessed, I dove. Not away from the grenade but towards Suki, who had just arrived on the roof behind me. She barely had time to yelp in shock before the grenade detonated.

I covered her body with my own for the initial blast, and it was only Block's shield that prevented my armour from being blown clean open. As it was, I felt shrapnel pepper my back painfully, but not lethally. Unfortunately the blast had not only taken out my shield but the floor beneath us. We fall.

Everything goes black.


	2. Chapter 2

**2\. Instinct**

Something I've found lately is that humans have a lot of instincts.

By instincts I mean irrational thoughts, notions and behaviours with little to no logical precursors. Our chips were supposed to suppress those.

So the question remains, why did I shield Suki with my own body like that?

The Advent conditioning doesn't allow for acts like that. You won't see any of us diving on grenades or jumping in front of snipers. We're just not wired that way. If your squad mate is about to get blown up, you don't waste time trying to save him when you could be shooting at whoever threw the bomb. Looking back, it does seem rather rigid and cold, but back then it was normal to me. That was the way things worked.

It surprised me at first how much humans rely on their instincts. So much of what we were taught, of what we consciously considered and calculated was handled by instinct in humans. Maybe that's why they can think so quickly compared to us.

That's what saving Suki was, an instinct. The first in a long line. Sometimes I wish I had simply ignored those instincts. It would have spared me a lot of pain. But then again, if I had ignored them I would probably be dead.

I'm getting ahead of myself again. What I'm trying to tell you about is the morning after the fall.

 **11 JULY 2035 - ADVENT MILITARY DEPOT W.E.110, LONDON**

I open my eyes and immediately regret it as bright light lances into my aching head. Our enlarged eyes give us serious night vision, necessitating the polarised filters on our helmets during the day, but it also means that asshole doctors shining bright lights into our faces tend to become very unpopular very quickly.

"Pupil response still a little sluggish, but he'll be fine. The concussion should clear up quickly."

Ah, the dulcet tones of our resident sawbones. Dr. Ong Shun Hok was a regular human and had acquired the nickname Butcher from the troops for the expected reasons. Universally adored he was not.

"Thank you Doctor. That will be all."

And there's only one person I know who can tell Butcher to get off like that. I tilt my head towards the second voice, trying to ignore the way the world throbs and whirls around me.

"Major World, sir."

There's a lot of stories about the commander of Advent Division W.E.110. I once heard someone swear up and down he was eight years old, and while that age seemed like an unattainable milestone to most of us I could well believe it in his case. On the less mythological side he was popular with the rank and file for his habit of actually listening to our problems and not pulling the wool over eyes. On the flip side, should someone manage to upset him, his temper was a thing of legend.

"At ease, soldier. How are you feeling?"

I wince as another lance of pain runs through my head.

"Mostly like an idiot, sir."

Major World chuckles.

"So what happened? From what your squad mate tells me you knocked into her while jumping away from a grenade. She didn't get a good look at whoever it was that threw the grenade."

I grope for the glass of water I noticed on the bedside table and take a sip before replying.

"There was two of them, sir. One male, one female."

Major World glances off to the side for a moment. I try to follow his gaze but before I can see what he was looking at he's looking back at me.

"Alright, I'll get you to write it up later. So how did you come to end up jumping on your squadmate?"

I'm not sure what possessed me to say what I said next. Maybe it was divine intervention, maybe it was another one of those damnable instincts. I suddenly knew that my actions up on that roof had been too independent for the Advent administration to look the other way. If I told Major World the truth, he'd shake my hand and congratulate me, then go to his office and make a call, and that would be the last anyone saw of me.

"I was trying to clear the grenade blast and didn't realise Suki was that close behind me. I miscalculated it, sir."

I'm not sure what to make of Major World's reaction, even without his helmet on he's difficult to read. Then again I suppose an officer doesn't make it to eight years old by wearing his heart on his sleeve.

"Alright. I'll let you rest now."

I don't register him walking off. I can't believe what just happened. I lied to the face of a superior officer. I lied. To a superior officer.

Moving with urgency that overrides the pain in my head, I lift my left arm and stare at the inside of my gauntlet. Four red lights in a little line wink back at me.

I flop back down onto the bed, baffled. If my armour's monitoring systems are telling me my chip is still in optimal condition then how did I just lie to Major World? The chip is supposed to make that impossible.

As I lie there stewing in my own thoughts, I can only reach one inescapable conclusion. The fall must have damaged my chip in such a way that the monitoring system still reads 100%. So not only do I have undetectable damage to my chip, I have no way of knowing exactly how extensive that damage is.

Suddenly a phrase I heard some human youth using the other day pops unbidden in my head.

Well, shit.


	3. Chapter 3

**3\. Loss**

Do you remember the first time you felt loss?

I don't. That's the thing about Advent, they don't want their troopers to feel. Emotions are unpredictable, or something like that. So when one of us sees a comrade in arms die, we feel a pain like we have never felt before and then two days later once things are back to normal the chip simply snips those memories out of our heads and we forget our fallen friends ever existed.

It does make you wonder why the Elders let us develop our own personalities and emotions at all. My personal theory is because the chips are a cheaper solution than tweaking our brains until we're mindless automatons, but I suppose we'll never get a straight answer about that.

I still have no idea how many friends I've lost and forgotten during my time. However I do have a rough idea, gleaned by counting the number of firefights I have been in before my chip got fried and extrapolating with the average casualties of the firefights I have been in since. The number is higher than I would like.

I do, however, remember the first time I remembered loss. It was when I got back to the barracks after being released from the medical bay.

 **11 JULY 2035 - ADVENT MILITARY DEPOT W.E.110, LONDON**

I hardly remember the walk to the armoury, stripping off my armour and putting on my off duty clothes, walking back to the barracks. My mind is still whirling. Every bone in my body is screaming at me to go to Major World and ask for a full diagnostic on my chip, but I don't. I know what comes afterward. Getting re-chipped isn't quite dying, but it might as well be. With the old faulty chip goes your memories, your personality, you. You're effectively reset to zero. My seven months of memories might not be much, but they're all I have and I'm not going to throw them away. For the first time in my life I am uncertain.

I am jolted out of my reverie when I walk through the door to the barracks room and am hit in the chest by a missile. I stagger backward slightly as my brain registers arms wrapped around my torso and an indistinct torrent of panicked words interspersed with sobs assaulting my ears.

As I hug a distraught Suki, my resolve hardens. I'm not giving up my memories of my best friend for anything.

Eventually I pry her off me and guide her to the wall. She sinks down into a sitting position and I sit beside her, noticing the tracks of tears down her face. Like me, she is wearing our off duty uniform of a grey T-shirt and black sweatpants, her feet bare.

"It's okay Suki, I'm fine, I'm here."

The words feel empty leaving my mouth but they seem to have the desired effect. She looks away from me for a moment, angrily swiping at the tears glistening on her cheeks as if embarrassed to be caught anything other than perfectly composed.

"I'm sorry. They just, they wouldn't tell me how you were, and ..."

She whimpers and shifts closer to me. I put one arm around her slim shoulders, feeling them shudder as she chokes back another sob.

"... I thought I was going to be left alone."

I look around the room, for the first time noticing the empty bunks on the left hand side where Block and Splashie usually had their meagre standard issue possessions and bedrolls laid out.

"Where's Block and Splashie?"

Even as the words leave my mouth I know the answer. Suki provides it in a strangled howl of anguish.

"They're gone!"

She stops trying to hold back her sobs and buries her head in my shoulder. I absent-mindedly stroke her back with one hand as I stare at the opposite wall with unfocused eyes. Inside I am feeling a bizarre combination of sick and numb. All I can think about for some reason is their voices. How Block always sounded so calm and tranquil in sharp contrast to Splashie's clipped staccato speech.

We sit like that for a long time. At some point Suki's hitched, broken breathing evens out as she drifts into sleep. I can feel my eyes growing heavy so I pick Suki up and lay her down in her bunk before climbing up into mine.

My eyes are shut almost before I've laid down.

I awaken to the feeling of something poking me repeatedly in the cheek. I open my eyes blearily to see Suki's face inches from my own.

"Honestly, Scotch, what's up with you? You never sleep through the alarm."

I grimace as yesterday's events rush back into my head.

"Hey Suki, are you okay?"

An expression of innocent confusion I'll never be able to forget flashes across her face.

"Why wouldn't I be?"

A look of understanding dawns.

"Oh, the firefight. Nah, I'm fine. No thanks to you, The Incredible Roof-Diver."

I slide out of my bunk, peering at her. I didn't think she hit her head on the landing, but maybe I was wrong? She turns to pick up her datapad and I examine the back of her head. No strange lumps or bruises.

"I mean about Block and Splashie."

She gives me a strange look over her shoulder.

"Who are they?"

She turns back to her datapad and so she misses the stunned expression on my face. How can she not remember ...

My eyes are drawn to the small lump at the back of her neck where her chip resides and I feel a sudden flash of anger. They made her forget, and if it wasn't for the damage to my chip they would have made me forget too. There and then, I decide to never forget them.

"Sorry, guess my head must still be a little scrambled. Don't worry about it."

She turns back to me, looking concerned.

"Are you okay? Want to go check in with the butcher?"

I shake my head.

"Nah, he said this might happen yesterday. I'll be fine by the time we're on patrol."

She nods absently, absorbed in her datapad. I pick up my own, scanning through the day's schedule. Morning nutrition, then our platoon is assigned to target practice in the morning and a patrol in the afternoon, then another patrol in the evening. Another fun day.

As we walk to morning nutrition I can't help but realise people are noticing my grim mood. Suki making faces and gestures behind me would usually cheer me up but every time I look at her I'm just reminded of what those chips do to our heads and I feel a fresh surge of anger. She picks up on this and stops trying to cheer me up, instead settling for directing a vicious glare at anyone who so much as looks twice at me.

By the time we reach the assembly hall I've got a handle on myself and am acting somewhat normally. As much as I'd love to jump up on a table and scream at everyone all that would accomplish would be a swift re-chipping. If I want to do something productive, or just stay alive, I'll have to stay below the radar.

"Are you sure you're alright, Scotch?"

I wave Suki off.

"I'm fine, just a headache. I'll feel better once I've got some fresh nutrients in me."

She looks at me skeptically but lets the matter drop as we reach the back of the queue. Morning nutrition is exactly what it sounds like, nutrients we receive in the morning. To elaborate, every Advent trooper has a sort of metal brace clamped around their left forearm which has a slot for a slim plastic packet that sits along the inside of the forearm. We get one packet a day, which is packed full of a slurry of all the proteins, carbohydrates, fats and other assorted nutrients we need on a daily basis. During the following twenty four hours the nutrients are introduced directly into our bloodstreams while waste chemicals are filtered out of the blood and stuffed back into the packet.

The queue, like everything in Advent, is nice and efficient and so barely three minutes later Suki and I are at the front, picking up our daily supply of whatever the hell is in those packets. I hand over my waste packet, the polymorphic material a dull yellow colour to make sure it doesn't get mixed up with fresh packets, and the machine sucks it in to do who knows what. Almost simultaneously a nice fresh blue packet pops out of the slot and I plug it in. Along with the fresh packet I get given a translucent cube about two by two by two centimetres in size, and I pop it in my mouth, feeling the solid cube start to loosen on my tongue as my mouth fills up with water. That's another example of what I've heard some officers refer to as 'Elder techno-bullshit' - that two centimetre cube contains about a litre and a half of water and electrolytes. Don't ask me how.

As I gulp down the aquacube, I look enviously up to the officer's table. All the officers are hunched over plain plastic mugs containing a bitter black liquid that is by all reports the nectar of the Elders. I glance sideways at Suki.

"One day I'm going to have a cup of coffee."

Suki gasps and her eyes widen.

"Scotch, you can't say stuff like that! Coffee's for officers only!"

I smile at her.

"I guess I'll just have to get myself promoted then."

She slugs me lightly in the shoulder.

"One of these days, you're going to say that in front of the wrong person and get in a lot of trouble."

I crush down the reminder of Block saying almost exactly the same thing to her two days ago. I have a facade to maintain.

"Nah. I'm too pretty to get in trouble. So, target practice."

A familiar competitive gleam appears in her eyes.

"You're on."


End file.
